I know most of you won't be getting this regardless, but this definitely applies to all games. He says all of the truths. I'm done preordering.

Other than the reaffirmation of my philosophy against pre-orders (specifically designed to screw you over in the case of a botched launch), this video reminded me of one thing: Halo 3 is my favorite non-CE Halo game.

Now, I won't break NDA and say what was on the survey as I took it. But I will say that calling 11% a comprehensive number based on a pool of participants who had to opt-in through email is a bit suspect. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that there would be more people in favor of not having sprint, because we all know that simply isn't true. But to throw your weight around and act like "see, told ya' fuckers no one wants sprint!" is a bit dishonest at best. I know that getting people to do online surveys (especially with lack of compensation) is a difficult task. But I do think we all would've been better served by 343i doing a survey from within the Halo 5 beta open to all.

I'd personally feel a lot better about the survey if 343i put the results out there. They have no reason not to do so, it's not hyper-sensitive data. Cherry picking results works when you're in a board meeting, sure, but when you're presenting data to be scrutinized it's bad when you don't present all the pieces.

So while they are giving us an option to remove the Spartan abilities, it still begs the question as to how these maps will play now because of how much bigger they are. Plus the fact if they will even include an online matchmaking mode without said abilities.

I do, however, like that they are increasing the base player speed, bringing back the original rocket launcher, making "smart link" more neutral & less visible (of course we'll have to see what this means exactly), and decreasing the medal count.

This still doesn't give them any brownie points from me, nor will I still buy this day one. They still have a lot to prove this time around first. One of them being a working lobby/matchmaking system.

I didn't play after the first week of beta, so I am not H5 fanboy. I probably will not buy the game on release.

But as much as we like to bash 343, they deserve props for actually being flexible. I too am unsure how the game will play with the bigger maps/without sprint (probably less than ideal), but I don't think we could expect anything else. They are making the game they want to make ultimately, and there is something to be said for devs sticking to their vision.

I suspect that it will have a modest reception at launch, but I think it would have been the same had they done a classic Halo. The series just doesn't have the clout it once did.